Month: February 2013

First run of ultra-limited Lost Dark promo postcards.
There will be five character designs in total (plus some generics), and each one depicts the character in some form. The reverse features a quote from or about the character.
I like the idea of offering physical snail-mail based goodies to readers of the e-books.
To date, there is only one of these out in the wild. An old friend of mine bought the book via Amazon. He said, “I’d ask you to sign it, but well, you know e-books ;)”
So, I signed him a postcard and sent that 😉
I’m also working on a remote ‘personalised signing pack’ that will allow a limited number of buyers of the print version to ‘sign’ their own books. This will be a physical signing by the reader themselves. Don’t worry, I have it all worked out. Not sure how to ‘offer’ the pack yet – caption competition? Ideas on a postcard please 😉

The Lost Dark is an adult urban horror with a paranormal twist. It started out as a short story in a Nottingham University Creative Writing workgroup as part of my Certificate in Creative Writing. Two years later the first draft was ‘complete’.
I spent the next two years revising and editing it while considering which publishing route to take. Most of my time during these two years was taken up with an MA in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University.
After I’d graduated, I had more time to work on the completion of the book. I even dropped my job to part time specifically to concentrate on writing. I hired a professional editor (Kathryn Koller) which turned out to be a fantastic decision, and with hindsight a ridiculous choice to even NOT consider. I put the novel through a Beta Reading stage. I worked on the cover art, playing with various designs and ideas – the final version is very close to my original vision. This last push, or ‘end phase’ if you like, to get the novel truly complete, took around four months of serious graft!
Self publishing is a time consuming and often frustrating process – mostly due to the amount of research and decision making involved. But ultimately it was very rewarding. I’m really glad I chose this way to publish my first novel. It’s been quite exciting!
The printed version of the novel should be available soon.
I’ll post more on what I did, who I asked for help and advice, and my overall process at some point soon…
Please go and check out the Kindle, Smashwords and Kobo sites.
And for my next project? I’m going to publish a collection of 20 or so previously published stories. And this time, I’ll keep my blog up to date as I go…
I’m also working on my second novel The Pattern of Birds which has grown out of my final MA dissertation piece.
If you’re reading this post, and you were involved in The Lost Dark, then here’s the bit where I thank you. You know the bit where I say, I couldn’t have done it without you? Well, it turns out it’s true. Thankyou.
Andy